Sand Dogs Revisited

A quick blog post in my current fashion of writing quickly and straight into the browser window. Apologies for typos.

As is usual, I have three articles open in my word processor at the moment and I'm trying not to lose my thread in any of them. However, I wanted to quickly revisit the sand dog controversy. Brief catchup: I wrote this blog post a year or so ago. I think I might well have been the first person to raise the issue of sand dogs and whether they are fake. That post is one of those that have brought most hits to the site, having been linked to countless times over the years. Indeed, a few months ago, realizing that this was 'an exclusive' I tried to pitch this very story to various news outlets and nobody was interested. Typical. Now it's been picked up by the mainstream media and this blog is getting hundreds of hits by the hour. I'm being cited as the chief cynic as to the veracity of the sand dogs.

What makes this particularly ironic is that in Liverpool the other day, I watched a guy carving a sand dog and I watched as he definitely 'cut'into part of the sculpt to pull away sand. That's not to say there isn't a scam going on but the examples shown in this Quirker and this  Metro piece are, to my eye, real sculpts. They also look infinitely better than the examples I've seen dotted across the North West. You'd have to be really cynical to believe that the guy who also added the puppies to the dog was anything less than an artist. The guys I see working the local market are no artists.

Not that I'm really bothered one way or another. I've long since realised that there are more interesting things to talk about. And on that score, I recommend you head over and read my George Galloway article.